Jacob Weisberg at Slate is horrified by “Hyper-libertarian Facebook billionaire Peter Thiel’s appalling plan to pay students to quit college“:
… To describe Peter Thiel as simply a libertarian wildly understates the case… In a personal statement produced last year for the Cato Institute, Thiel announced: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” The public, he says, doesn’t support unregulated, winner-take-all capitalism and so he doesn’t support the public making decisions… Thiel says that the Roaring 20s were the last period when it was possible for supporters of freedom like him to be optimistic about politics. “Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women—two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians—have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron,” he writes.
__
… Thiel, who is openly gay, wants to flee the mob, not rally it… Having given up hope for American democracy, he writes that he has decided to focus “my efforts on new technologies that may create a new space for freedom.” Both his entrepreneurship and his philanthropy have been animated by techno-utopianism. In founding PayPal, which made his first fortune when he sold it to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002, Thiel sought to create a global currency beyond the reach of taxation or central bank policy. He likewise sees Facebook as a way to form voluntary supra-national communities.
__
Offline, Thiel is the lead backer of Seasteading, a movement to create law-free floating communes based on voluntary association. Led by Milton Friedman’s pajama-wearing grandson, this may be the most elaborate effort ever devised by a group of computer nerds to get invited to an orgy. (Let’s build our own Deepwater Horizon with legal prostitution!) Thiel is also an investor in space exploration, with the avowed aim of creating new political structures even farther offshore. That could take some time, but Thiel—who loves robots and science fiction—has a plan for that, too. He has given millions to the Methuselah Foundation, which does research into life-extension based on the premise that humans can live to be 1,000 years old. At PayPal, he proposed making cryogenic storage an employee perk.
__
It should be noted that Thiel has also supported some genuinely good and useful causes, like the Committee to Protect Journalists. But Thiel’s latest crusade is his worst yet… The Thiel Fellowship will pay would-be entrepreneurs under 20 $100,000 in cash to drop out of school. In announcing the program, Thiel made clear his contempt for American universities which, like governments, he believes, cost more than they’re worth and hinder what really matters in life, namely starting tech companies. His scholarships are meant as an escape hatch from these insufficiently capitalist institutions of higher learning.
__
Where to start with this nasty idea? A basic feature of the venture capitalist’s worldview is its narcissism, and with that comes the desire to clone oneself—perhaps literally in Thiel’s case. Thus Thiel fellows will have the opportunity to emulate their sponsor by halting their intellectual development around the onset of adulthood, maintaining a narrow-minded focus on getting rich as young as possible, and thereby avoid the siren lure of helping others or contributing to the advances in basic science that have made the great tech fortunes possible…
Thiel sounds like half the guys in my own geek-dominated college social circle, only with the money to implement his narcissistic fantasies. His financial success may have more to do with getting lucky picking the right technerds at the right time than his actual Galtian ubermenschen talents, but this ‘Fellowship’ scheme seems to me like a ploy for getting lucky in the old-fashioned sense. For a mere $100k — tax deductible! — a pop,Thiel has engineered himself the opportunity to wine and dine many a hot young man about his brilliant entrepreneurial ideas, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. Sure, some people may have sniggered about Malcolm Forbes’ “publishing empire”, but it was a lot less socially embarrassing for Mal to introduce yet another associate editor or assistant design manager at the club than to pretend he couldn’t keep a secretary for more than a few weeks. Who knows, one or another of those “entrepreneurs” might even turn out to be another Zuckerberg — and at the very least, it’s a lot cheaper than serial alimony.
As for the young men themselves… it’s not as though dropping out of college, however dramatically, barred anyone from going back again once their sponsor got bored fellowship contract expired. And Weisberg can stop worrying about the lads “halting their intellectual development around the onset of adulthood”… quite a few of us can attest that one outgrows one’s college fads and foibles, whether Marxism, lesbian separatism, cosplay, fanfiction, or Aqua Buddah.
ruemara
I see, so he thinks BioShock was a blueprint, not a warning. Galt beyond the sea!
Yutsano
Dammit AL, why are all the huge whackaloons gay as plaid rabbits, out or otherwise? I bet he’s not even rated on the doable scale. And I am of the opinion no gay man should be rich, because it makes them imbecilic.
Comrade Luke
It would be fascinating to get the full list of complete fucking morons dominating our discourse who have become rich solely off of eBay and Yahoo. Thiel, Meg Whitman and Mark Cuban immediately come to mind, but there are tons more.
morzer
He’s a sad, ignorant bastard, that’s for sure.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: I think most people who are rich are imbecilic. Unfortunately, they can just pay people to tell them how brilliant they are.
ETA: OK. That was painting with too broad a brush. Substitute many for most so Sully won’t come after me.
suzanne
@Yutsano: Dude’s not bad-looking, actually. Not my type, but I wouldn’t feel the need to de-louse after looking at him.
I second your opinion on the rich thing, though I would extend that to, well, pretty much every dude. I’ve dated a few wealthy men and all of them were more boring than watching golf on television. Couldn’t get past the third date with any of them.
jl
I think I saw a plaque at UCLA commemorating the first internet connection between that campus and Stanford. Except it was arpanet back then. In a project for the airforce, if I remember correctly. And all those people were university professors in math and engineering.
It is a tragedy of missed opportunities.
Just think what what wonders would have happened if the stupid government hadn’t stuck its nose into it, and Kleinrock had dropped out of school. We would all have downloaded ourselves into the intergalactic immortal computer paradise by now.
Boy, now that I realize what could have been, I am pretty durn mad! Damn government and pointy headed universities holding us back!
Luthe
You’re supposed to grow out of fanfiction? ::iz clearly doing it rong::
asiangrrlMN
@jl: Heh heh heh. You made me chuckle heartily. That’s one reason I agreed to fake-marry you.
Yutsano
@jl: I Love the smell of snark in the late evening.
@suzanne: I agree with you on wealthy guys, although my experience is a bit different. I got involved with a trust fund kid who was busy trying to see how far he could go before he got cut off (grandparents left him the money and they’re log dead so it was mostly for nose-tweaking purposes) and he was a bit flashy with the checkbook. He wasn’t a bad person, it was just how he was used to introducing himself and interacting with the world. He wasn’t really BORING, but we didn’t really exist in the same universes.
El Cid
I have been hoping to see these declared floating cities for the libertardians for a while now. I’m sure they have their inspiring 3D animations of their waterworlds of the future, but if they ever attempt to build their oceanic freedom platforms, it’s going to be a floating scandalous pile of money-losing, problem-plagued shit.
Maybe they should just buy a supertanker and use any usable space in the interior for living quarters, meeting spaces, halls of mirrors, etc, followed by another supertanker for supplies (just like the big yachts of the very rich have a supplies and equipment boat following), followed by another supertanker for all the support staff.
They could then anchor themselves just outside US territorial waters and think of themselves as ruff-tuff liberty heroes and still be able to send in skiffs to get stuff or help from the mainland whenever needed.
Nethead Jay
@jl: That’s 10 kinds of snarkiliciously awesome. Well done!
asiangrrlMN
@El Cid: I’ll throw in a fiver to make this happen.
TS! Where are you? Show yourself!
jl
@El Cid:
“but if they ever attempt to build their oceanic freedom platforms, it’s going to be a floating scandalous pile of money-losing, problem-plagued shit.”
That is really unfair, and a low blow. They fall apart and sink, OK? You should be ashamed of yourself for slander like that.
I am going Galt.
El Cid
@jl: My guess is that they’ll get progressively more awful, like shit spewing up on the decks, then just sinking. You know, like the freshwater recycling system infected with various agents, or maybe getting electrocuted in the showers like our men and women in Iraq, or just a foul odor that no one can track down.
asiangrrlMN
@jl: Oh my god. I am in hysterics over here. Please don’t go to bed yet!
@El Cid: And you come strongly with the darkness. I’m loving this reality the two of you are weaving together.
secondlaws
… or Airborne Ranger. SIR, YES SIR!
suzanne
@Yutsano: My problem with rich dudes is just that their primary hobby is… being rich, and getting richer. Whenever I tried to discuss, like, anything else, I got big, blank stares.
“Read any good books lately?”
“Yeah, Jack Welsh’s book was great!”
:::snore:::
asiangrrlMN
@suzanne: I think it’s because they get so many people sucking up to them just because they’re rich. They don’t have to be interesting in general because no one gives a shit (well, most people don’t). So, when they meet someone who demands more from them, they don’t know WHAT to do.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: Kind of, at least in my experience. He was just used to people demanding things from him. And I’m so halcyon that all you really need to be is you and odds are I’ll like you. He’s not a bad person at all, he just felt like he needed to live up to too many expectations. He disappeared on me, I still haven’t tracked him down yet.
Martin
This asshat invented PayPal?
So many things make sense now.
Martin
@El Cid: This has already been done, by the way.
suzanne
@asiangrrlMN: Yeah, for sure. And they just can’t grasp that some people aren’t primarily motivated by acquisition. I mean, when I finally decided to go for my lifelong ambition and headed to graduate school, this dude I was dating at the time said, “That’s great, architects make BANK!”
Uh, dude, WTF?
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: Yeah, I can see that. I was referring more to the type of guy I suspect suzanne meant. The ones who are so ridiculously rich and are focused solely on their wealth.
And, one doesn’t have to let people know one has money.
@suzanne: Yep. It’s like religion–they cannot fathom that you may not worship the same god they do.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN:
This is true. When I first met the Dawg he was just a state trooper from western New York. I only found out later he was the only child of an only child of a very rich VERY old New York family. I think my reaction to that revelation was part of the motivation for him keeping me around.
suzanne
@asiangrrlMN: Actually, I think a couple of those rich dudes liked me in part ’cause I always offer to split the check on dates. I can imagine it gets old being taken advantage of. But seriously, dudes, if you want people to be into you for more than your money, then you need to be into more than your money!
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: Plus you’re smart and cute and sweet. And a good cook. And gentlemanly. And funny. And caring.
@suzanne: True on all accounts. I like splitting the check or doing the, “I pay this time; you pay next time” dance.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: The last one I think was the big point with him, for reasons that are too complicated and personal to go into now. Plus 6:30 is headed towards me quickly, and unlike y’all I’m not insomniac. Night hon.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: Night! Sweet dreams.
sven
@Martin: I was really hoping you were pushing a spoof….
(sigh)
Martin
@sven: It’s a wild, wild world out there.
morzer
@El Cid:
Well, they could be all China Mieville. Doubtless Mr Thiel has already figured out where to find an avanc…
Spaghetti Lee
Lord almighty. What is wrong with these people? Not hugged enough as children? But man oh man, the money I would pay for raw feed of the first day on SuperParadise Island:
“OK guys, who brought food?”
“Uh…”
“Who installed the plumbing?”
“Er…”
“Did someone at least get the wireless working?”
Within 2 hours, they’re trying to find out if back issues of Reason and pirated copies of 2112 are edible. Like watching a chimp play with a stick.
Lit3Bolt
Well thanks Anna Laurie. I was working on that Boba Fett costume for YEARS (I kept gaining weight so had to adjust the armor plates), and was carefully putting the finishing touches to my magnum opus 300,000 word epic lyric poem Winnie the Pooh/Aliens crossover fanfic. You have officially ruined my life.
max
And Weisberg can stop worrying about the lads “halting their intellectual development around the onset of adulthood”…
The problem with that theory is that Weisberg is going to picking hot young men, not nerdy types. And if they’re the type to be willing to trade fellatio for money, they probably aren’t too entrepreneurial in the sense that produces tech companies (which are the kinds of places where you work 24-7). So he’s going to be picking hot, stupid and lazy. Those poor sods need college, because they’re never going galt.
quite a few of us can attest that one outgrows one’s college fads and foibles, whether Marxism, lesbian separatism, cosplay, fanfiction, or Aqua Buddah.
Anyways, there seems to be plenty of evidence that while you can take the Aqua Buddah out of the libertarian, you’re stuck with the rest of the stupid. I mean, look at the Republican party and consider warped development.
max
[‘I can’t wait for the political careers of his proteges (providing that they didn’t drown on the seastead), they’ll probably make Sarah Palin look intelligent.’]
Chris
@suzanne: I’m rich (well, sort of). Of course I’m also pretty boring. Just not in the same way as the guys you’re talking about. :-)
kommrade reproductive vigor
Eee! Don’t do it! It’s a trap! He’ll make you do … things … nasty things, if you take the money!11
/fReichtard
Chris
@suzanne: Funny, I’d talk about Chris Moore, or the upcoming Vorkosigan book from Bujold (which Amazon emailed me that they shipped over the weekend, so it should be here any day now!).
saucy
I’m excited for the real-life city of Rapture these guys are going to build. Are we certain Andrew Ryan isn’t involved?
aimai
@Chris:
Wait! There’s a new Vorkosigan novel? Oh joy.
aimai
LGRooney
He’s really pissed off about gay marriage becoming a reality because now he will have to listen to incessant calls to settle down. If he can just escape to his paradise where he outlaws commitment…
Ash Can
For more reasons than one. What makes Weisberg think that someone who’d be all in favor of dropping out and going Galt with an impractical, narcissistic imbecile would be in any way employable in the first place? Any employer hiring on the basis of technical skills alone is not going to remain in the position of employer for very long; either that person will be fired for hiring shitty, high-turnover employees or the company will collapse under the weight of talented idiocy.
brantl
Did he ever outgrow Aqua Buddha? I doubt it.
Tyro
Thiel definitely comes across as kind of a douche in a lot of ways, but his $100,000 fellowships to drop out and start a company are hardly some kind of sin. Maybe my perspective is a bit different: despite having attended an elite college, many of my classmates didn’t finish in the prescribed 4 years, some of whom dropped out and then returned to finish up later. If someone offers you $100,000 of venture startup funds on the condition that you leave college, why not do it? If it works, you get rich. If it doesn’t, you go back to college.
Weisberg has so much rope to hang Thiel on, but he ends up picking Thiel’s most innocuous, least offensive idea.
Hedges Ahead
I hope Neal Stephenson can get a cut somehow. Thiel’s aqua-arcology reeks of Rife’s Raft from ‘Snow Crash’; the garbage/houseboat morass riding the clockwise Pacific currents and surrounding the book’s ‘fiber-optic monopolist’ villain’s personal craft, the former USS Enterprise.
Of course the novel’s in-world conditions already have the country/world divided up into corporate-sponsored/protected enclaves of voluntary association. But those developments are already proceeding apace, regardless of Thiel and his plot. Why must dystopian speculative fiction keep coming true?
Emma
Aimai: Yep. I know what I’m doing this weekend!
El Cid
@Tyro: I agree. The $100K for doing something other than college doesn’t sound so bad except for the PR spin that it’s because all such education is worthless. And is there really sufficient evidence to assume this is a mere
rent-boyluggage-carrying operation.rickstersherpa
I wonder who they think will protect them from pirates? And if they hire guards, who will protect them from the guards (Quis Custodiet ipsos Custodes?)
They do love fables (the Roaring twenties and the Gay nineties (nineteenth century nineties, where the reality of the gilded age came a cropper on shoals of the panic of ’93).
I expect he enjoys Robert Heinlein. I do to, but like Isaac Aismov, I note that Heinlein’s politics changed when he changed wives. And I stopped taking those politics seriously about the time I turned 25 and started dealing with these funny little people called children.
El Cid
@rickstersherpa:
That’s why I think they’ll be like 10 yards outside whatever US territorial water demarcation they prefer.
Chris
@aimai: Yep, I signed up for auto-ship on it when I heard (a month or three ago I think). Ah, August 17, sez Amazon. Moreover, estimated arrival is … today, yay :-) (er, yesterday now, it’s tomorrow morning already)
(direct link to item)
Another Nick
@suzanne:
So you’re saying that you dated Jack Donaghy?
daveNYC
Could be worse, at least turning into a Snow Crash dystopia would put us on a path to turn into the Diamond Age setting.
And if these jagoffs manage to build their version of Rapture, I’ll give it six months before some Somali pirates show up and loot the crap out of the place.
LGRooney
@daveNYC: So, they won’t go anywhere near the East African coast. They’ll just go to
the Caribbean, no, no,the Indonesian Sea(s), aw nuts,the Philippine Sea, crap – I hope they love their rubber duckies.fasteddie9318
Why are we, as a society, not farther along in the process of getting the Galtards to cast themselves out to sea or send themselves to the moon or whatever? Is there some sort of charity to which people like me can donate to help make this a reality?
Ash Can
@daveNYC:
And won’t those pirates be thrilled to find nothing more than several cases of Cheetos and Mountain Dew, a few dozen well-used Ayn Rand novels, and a bunch of anatomically-correct blowup dolls. “Crap” is right.
Citizen_X
@Ash Can: Yes, but then they’ll figure, “Hey, we’ve got a bunch of rich westerners here; let’s hold them for ransom.”
And then they’ll find out that no one gives a shit about these people enough to pay for their release.
Bob L
Thiel needs to go read up on American economic history if he thinks the period before the ’20s were some glibertirain paradise were he could have done as he pleased.
Pender
Whoa… I was with you until you unexpectedly started accusing him of sexually stalking young people, presumably because he’s a gay.
Seriously, what the fuck? If he were black, would you suspect that he wanted some impressionable young contacts to whom he could DEAL CRACK?
Bass
A lot of Thiel’s stuff sounds awesome. I’m all in favor of more space exploration and colonization, am in favor of exploring the possibility of drifting sea habitats/colonies, and wish that my employer offered cryogenic hibernation as a benefit.
scarshapedstar
Does this guy really think we’re so stupid as to not realize that he’s totally just ripping off Sealand?
Mnemosyne
@Pender:
If it’s news to you that powerful men use that power to hit on people they find attractive, you must be the most naive person on the entire planet.
Newsflash: powerful straight men do it, too. It’s not because Thiel’s “a gay.” It’s because he has the money and power that gives him the access to do it. Being gay doesn’t make him immune to the same lure that got a (straight) president impeached.
Don
This guy may be a douche but this kind of gay-baiting should be beneath you, Anne.
If this had come along with the slightest hint that this is what this guy is like, great. But the quoted article’s snark about getting invited to orgys at least didn’t play specifically into the culture war’s image of a predatory gay man.
I’m really not the politically correct oversensitive type, but this is some variation on sexism (the young entrepreneurs getting this money must be men, right?) and gay stereotype (a gay man interacting with younger men must be doing it primarily so he can fuck them).
If Anne can honestly say that snark about this guy doing this in order to bang young women would have rolled off her keyboard, fine, I’ll accept that as truth. But it wouldn’t play into the negative stereotypes anywhere near as easily and wouldn’t reinforce a dynamic that I think is pretty much anathema to balloon juice on average.
Socraticsilence
Wait so you get 100 grand to take a couple years off and screw around with a tech venture that will almost certainly fail, and then you can go back? If this doesn’t get scammed “The Producers” style I’ll be disappointed- 10k covers a year of rent, a cheap 6er, pizza, a 360, internet a 72 inch HDTV- play Halo and chillaxe for a couple of years Brah! Do some internships to pad the resume, get a few connections and bam you’re a superstar.
Ruckus
@Martin:
You sound like you have some exposure to the god squids.
jetan
Extra credit awarded for the Joe Bob Briggs reference.
Jason
I know 20 working-class W PA kids who could use that kind of money. Actually I know roughly 6,000. Oh wait – don’t want to court resentment here, I’m sure his anti-scholarship will be awarded on merit alone.